Covert Experiments on Citizens

Covert Experiments on Citizens: In the 20th century, governments and their researchers tested drugs, germs, chemicals, and radiation on people who never agreed to take part. Prisoners, soldiers, patients, children, and entire cities served as subjects, and exposure came through investigations, leaks, and lawsuits decades later.

MKUltra: Launched by the CIA in 1953, this program ran 149 subprojects testing LSD and other drugs, often on people who did not know. Most records were destroyed in 1973, but about 20,000 documents surfaced in 1977 and fueled congressional hearings.

Sidney Gottlieb: The CIA chemist who ran MKUltra tested drugs on himself and others. After retiring in 1973, he lived on a Virginia farm and volunteered at a leprosarium abroad.

Operation Midnight Climax: In the 1950s and early 1960s the CIA ran safe houses in San Francisco and New York where paid women lured men who were then secretly dosed with LSD while agents watched through one way mirrors.

Frank Olson: A CIA scientist was secretly given LSD in November 1953, then fell to his death from a New York hotel window nine days later. His family later received a settlement and a presidential apology.

Tuskegee Study: From 1932 to 1972, US health officials observed 399 Black men with syphilis in Alabama without treating them, even after penicillin became standard. President Clinton apologized in 1997.

Operation Sea Spray: In September 1950 the US Navy sprayed Serratia marcescens bacteria over San Francisco to test biological warfare vulnerability. Cases of infection followed, including one death, and the truth emerged in the 1970s.

Operation LAC: In the 1950s, the US Army sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide particles over cities including St. Louis, telling residents it was a smoke screen test. Some neighborhoods were poor and Black, and questions about health effects persist.

Hanford Green Run: In December 1949, plant operators in Washington State deliberately released radioactive iodine from freshly run fuel to test Soviet detection methods. The public was told nothing until the 1980s.

Albert Stevens: In 1945, doctors injected this California patient with plutonium without telling him, after misdiagnosing his illness as cancer. Known as CAL 1, he lived another 20 years and received one of the highest recorded radiation doses.

Fernald School: From 1946 to 1953, boys at this Massachusetts school were fed cereal containing radioactive iron and calcium tracers as part of a nutrition study. Many were told they were in a science club, and the state later paid a settlement.

Guatemala Syphilis Experiments: From 1946 to 1948, US health researchers infected prisoners, soldiers, and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis. The study was uncovered by a historian in 2010 and drew a US presidential apology.

Edgewood Arsenal: From the 1950s to 1970s, the US Army tested chemical agents including the hallucinogen BZ on about 7,000 soldiers at this Maryland facility, often with limited information about the risks.

Ewen Cameron: The Montreal psychiatrist, with CIA funding, subjected patients at the Allan Memorial Institute to heavy electroshock, drugs, and repeated taped messages in the 1950s and 1960s. Canada paid compensation to victims in the 1990s.

Ronald Maddison: In 1953, this 20 year old RAF volunteer died after liquid sarin was dropped on his arm at Porton Down, England. A 2004 inquest ruled it unlawful killing.

Holmesburg Prison: From 1951 to 1974, Philadelphia dermatologist Albert Kligman tested chemicals including dioxin on inmates. He later co developed Retin A.

Downwinders: Nuclear tests in Nevada from 1951 to 1962 dropped fallout across Utah, Nevada, and Arizona while officials assured residents they were safe. A 1990 federal law later offered compensation to many exposed.

State Plan 14.25: East Germany's secret doping program from the 1970s to 1989 gave steroids to thousands of athletes, including minors, who were often told the pills were vitamins.

Kamera: The Soviet secret poison laboratory, run for decades by Grigory Mairanovsky, tested toxins on condemned prisoners. The substances were intended for use in assassinations.

Project Coast: South Africa's apartheid era chemical and biological weapons program was led by cardiologist Wouter Basson, known as Dr. Death. He was acquitted of criminal charges in 2002 but later censured by medical authorities.

Eileen Welsome: The Albuquerque Tribune reporter uncovered stories of Americans secretly injected with plutonium in a 1993 series that won a Pulitzer Prize. Her work led President Clinton to order a review of radiation experiments.

Project SHAD: From 1962 to 1973, the US Navy tested chemical and biological agents or simulants on ships carrying sailors. The Defense Department acknowledged the tests in 2000.

Project Sunshine: In the 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission collected bones and tissue from deceased infants and others worldwide to measure fallout, often without the families' knowledge.

Chester Southam: In 1963, the cancer researcher injected live cancer cells into elderly patients at a Brooklyn hospital without their informed consent. The case led to resignations and reforms, yet he later became president of a major cancer research association.

Eugene Saenger: From 1960 to 1971 at Cincinnati General Hospital, this radiologist gave whole body radiation to cancer patients, most of them poor and Black, in research funded by the Pentagon. Families won a settlement in 1999.